The Metropolitans Read online

  19

  THE HOUR OF THE FISH

  “WHAT TOOK YOU so long?” Kiku asked when they came through the workroom door. She had arranged the pages in a neat pile and sat with her hands clasped over them. If she squeezed them tightly enough, she could keep them from shaking.

  “Walt saw Mr. January outside the museum and took off after him,” Madge said. “Joe and I went after him.”

  Kiku saw Madge exchange a look with Joe. Walt wasn’t looking at anyone. His hands were jammed in his pockets and he was staring at the table. They’re not telling me something, Kiku thought.

  They don’t trust you, a voice said inside her head. It was Morgaine’s voice. It had been there since she’d read the chapter alone, which she had done as soon as she had left Miss Fitzbane and come back to the workshop. If the others knew that she had read it alone then they wouldn’t trust her anymore.

  I should tell them about what happened with Miss Fitzbane, Kiku thought.

  If you tell them, they’ll really never trust you again. Can’t you see—

  “So what happened,” Kiku asked, “when you caught up with Mr. January?”

  “Nothing,” Walt said, not meeting Kiku’s eyes. “I-I hit him, but it didn’t do any good. He just laughed at me and got away.”

  “And what about you two?” Kiku turned to Madge and Joe. “What were you doing? Couldn’t you stop him?”

  “He was gone by the time we got there,” Joe said.

  You see, they’re lying to you. What were Madge and Joe doing all that time alone in the forest?

  “Did you get lost?” Kiku asked.

  “Sort of,” Madge answered, blushing. “Hey, is that the third chapter?”

  Kiku looked down at the pages under her clasped hands. “Yes,” she said, “I figured out the third clue and went to get it.”

  “All by yourself?” Madge asked.

  “I do know the museum better than the rest of you.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Madge said. “It’s just that we’re not supposed to do it alone.”

  “We’re not supposed to read the chapter alone. I didn’t read it.” The lie came out of her mouth before she could stop it. They obviously had their own secrets; why shouldn’t she? “I just found it.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” Madge began.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Joe said. “The important thing is we have the chapter. We can read it and then decode the next clue. What’s this one called?”

  “I can’t make out the writing. Here—” Kiku passed the chapter to Joe, hoping no one would notice that her hands were shaking. Then she got up and walked toward the alcove. “I’ll make us some tea while you read it.”

  “Don’t you want to hear it?” Madge asked, getting up to follow her.

  She was always bossy, Morgaine whispered in her head.

  “Can’t you just be quiet for two minutes!” Kiku said to the voice. But Madge must have thought she was talking to her. Her face turned as red as her hair.

  “I-I thought you wouldn’t want to miss the chapter,” Madge said.

  “I have a headache,” Kiku said. “And I’m sure I’ll be able to hear it from here.”

  “Sure,” Madge said, “Sister Veronica was always telling me my voice gave her a headache. I’ll just sit down and be quiet while Joe reads it.”

  Madge went back to the table and sat down with her hands folded tightly in front of her as if she were trying to stop her thoughts from flying out of her fingertips. Kiku felt terrible. Madge had been nice to her, taking her back to her home, doing her hair—

  Trying to make you into something you’re not.

  —but how could she explain that Morgaine’s voice was in her head because she’d read the chapter by herself? And how would she sit at the table with them pretending she hadn’t read the chapter already? She busied herself making tea while Joe read the chapter.

  IN WHICH MORGAINE MAKES A JOURNEY OF HER OWN IN THE HEWAN WOOD.

  Morgaine was glad at first to be on her own in the forest. She had grown up an only child in Tintagel Castle and was unused to spending so much time in the company of others. Now she enjoyed the company of trees and ferns and the birds that flitted in the treetops. A flash of gold in the upper boughs caught her attention and she followed it deeper into the woods, straying off the path into a field of bluebells. When she looked up to find her bearings she couldn’t find the sun anywhere. The forest was full of a soft golden light that didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere at all. She turned in a circle looking for the path back to her friends and found herself facing a small pointy-eared person dressed in a gray-green tunic stitched from leaves and ferns. He wore a wreath of leaves around his head and a mischievous smile on his face.

  “Well met, Morgaine le Fay,” the person said. “Welcome to Avalon.”

  “I thought I was in the Hewan Woods,” she said, not liking that the person knew her name.

  “You crossed over to Avalon as you wandered.”

  “Have my friends . . . crossed over too?”

  The person laughed, a tinkling sound that made the leaves in the trees dance and the bluebells chime. “They are ordinary humans who cannot cross from world to world as you can, Morgaine of the Fairies. You have far more power than them. If you wished, you could rule the kingdom instead of Arthur.”

  “I am content to be Arthur’s sister and friend and to counsel him.”

  “Are you?” the fairy—for fairy he certainly was—asked, laughing again. This time his laughter made the very trees sway and shake and the air darken to murky green. Morgaine smelled copper and remembered all her grievances: the way Arthur always thought he knew best and Guinevere was always fussing with her hair and Lancelot couldn’t keep his eyes off Guinevere.

  “Could you show me how to be more powerful?” Morgaine asked.

  The fairy smiled. His teeth were pointed and sharp looking. “Yes,” he said. And so he did. When Morgaine rejoined the others she had gained powers beyond imagining—nor could she imagine yet how she would use them.

  Everyone was quiet when Joe finished reading. Kiku stood in the alcove waiting for someone to say something. Would they know that Kiku had also wandered into Avalon as Morgaine had? Would they guess she had also met someone who had tempted her to betray the others? Why weren’t they talking?

  Finally, when she couldn’t stand the suspense anymore, she brought the tea tray into the room and laid it down on the table. Everyone looked up at her.

  They’ve guessed, Morgaine whispered in her head. They will never trust you again.

  But then Joe smiled at her. “Is your headache better? We were trying to be quiet while Walt decoded the message until you felt better.”

  She smiled back at him. “I feel better now.” She poured Madge a cup of tea. “You don’t have to be quiet on my account.”

  “Good,” Walt said, “Because I’ve got it. But it’s not good. It says: ‘You will be given further instructions and the means to carry out your part in the attack on the Day of the Archer at the Hour of the Fish under the Sign of the Bull. Bring a Gladstone.’”

  “What the heck does that mean?” Madge asked.

  “A Gladstone is a kind of small suitcase,” Kiku said. “I think Dr. Bean’s got one in his closet here.”

  “Not that,” Madge said, rolling her eyes. “I mean the other stuff about the Archer and the Bull and the Fish! I’ve heard the toughs in our neighborhood talking about sleeping with the fishes, but that’s not a good thing.”

  “They’re signs of the zodiac,” Walt said. “My aunt Sadie reads her horoscope in the paper. The Archer is Sagittarius—that’s the ninth sign of the zodiac, so that must mean the ninth day—

  “Which is tomorrow!” Kiku said, and then looking down at her watch. “Or actually today! What about the Fish?”

  “The Fish are
Pisces,” Walt said. “They’re the twelfth sign, so it must mean 12:00 noon.”

  “Good,” Joe said, “that gives us some time to get there.”

  “What do you mean?” Kiku asked. “You don’t want to go to this place!”

  “We have to,” Joe said. “He says there will be further instructions. If we don’t go, we won’t be able to figure out where the attack will take place. But what does he mean ‘under the Sign of the Bull’?”

  “The sign of the Bull is the constellation of Taurus,” Walt said. “But I don’t understand what he means either. Are we supposed to figure out where Taurus is in the sky and go there?”

  “But it’s getting light out,” Kiku said, looking with alarm at the pale gray light filtering down from the high windows. “And you can’t even see the stars well in the city.”

  “Not in the sky, maybe,” Madge said, grinning, “but I know one place in the city where the stars shine all day long.”

  Know-it-all! the voice inside her head said, but she was no longer sure whose voice it was—hers or Morgaine’s.

  20

  THE WHISPERING GALLERY

  LIKE ANY TRUE New Yorker, Madge had passed through Grand Central Terminal more times than she could count, but she almost never paused to look up. Who has time? she would have replied if anyone asked. But today, even though she had less time than ever, she stopped right in the middle of the main concourse and tilted her head back, gawking like any tourist.

  The ceiling far, far above her was the blue-green shade of tarnished copper and robin’s eggs mixed together. The lights twinkled like stars on a summer night, and gold figures of animals and men in togas sprawled across it. She’d never thought much about what they were doing up there while she and thousands of New Yorkers hurried down below. What does it have to do with me? she would have said if you’d asked her. But in the last two days she’d realized that the big world around her did have a lot to do with her. A man giving an order to drop bombs thousands of miles away had plunged her country into war. A book written hundreds of years ago was changing the way she thought. So maybe she wasn’t so distant from these flying animals and robed gods after all (Only, sheesh! Could that fella with the big vase put some pants on?). The one thing she did know was that if the great wide world could come busting into her life, then she could darn well bust into the world.

  The first thing she was going to do was find Mr. January and give him a piece of her mind. The message said he’d be waiting under the Sign of the Bull at noon. But everyone and his uncle knew the place to meet at Grand Central was at the big clock. When they had split up earlier (“In case Mr. January tries to follow us,” Walt had suggested) they agreed to enter the main concourse from four separate directions.

  Were the others here yet? She looked around the station and saw a girl and a soldier locked in a clinch. Jeez Louise! They aren’t shy at all! There were two more couples near the big clock and, Madge noticed as she scanned the floor of the vast main concourse, dozens more just like them—gals saying good-bye to their fellows before they shipped out. In fact, the whole station was full of soldiers carrying duffel bags. One rushed by her now, bumping into her. “Hey, watch where—” she began, but when she met the boy’s eyes, she swallowed her complaint. Golly, he looked hardly older than Frankie!

  “Watch yourself over there, soldier,” she said instead.

  “Sure thing, doll face. How about a good-bye kiss?”

  “In your dreams, buddy! Keep on marching!”

  The boy grinned and saluted Madge. Then he ran across the concourse toward the train tracks, joining up with a dozen soldiers in khaki uniforms all slapping one another on the back and laughing in that loud way boys had when they were trying not to show how scared they were. She could hear the sound of that laughter echoing all around the concourse along with the strains of “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” That would be Mary Read playing her organ up in the north balcony. Madge had read in the paper that when Mary had played “The Star-Spangled Banner” on Sunday after the attack, everyone in the whole station had stopped where they were and stood with hand over heart singing just as loud as they could. The station managers had asked Mary please not to play the national anthem anymore. After all, they had a train station to run, and it was busier than ever with all the soldiers on the move.

  In the middle of all that rushing stood Joe in her father’s coat and knit cap, carrying a brown Gladstone bag. They’d decided that one of them would have to pretend to be the dead spy to make the trade off, and since Joe looked the oldest, he would stand under the sign of the Bull and wait for Mr. January. He was looking up at the clock. He could have been any one of the dozens of guys waiting for his girl to say good-bye to. No one would know that he was waiting for a spy with a weapon that could kill everyone in the station.

  But Madge knew and it made Joe seem vulnerable to her—like he was pretending to be tough to hide how scared he was.

  She looked around for the others—yes, there was Kiku in the east balcony, looking mysterious in the veiled hat Madge had given her, leaning on the ledge just above a sign for US war bonds. She was reading a piece of paper which Madge guessed was the clue that told where the next chapter of the Kelmsbury was. They hadn’t been able to figure it out before they left—something about a coffin of bone—and Kiku had brought it along. Madge could tell she didn’t like not being able to figure it out.

  She looked around next for Walt. He was supposed to be on the south side, but Madge didn’t see him. Maybe he was out in the waiting room. She’d just have a quick look to be sure. Freckles had been acting a little funny since his run-in with Mr. January last night in the park.

  Madge turned and walked back over the bridge that led to the waiting room. As she passed over the bridge, she saw a flash of red hair on the ramp below that led to the lower level. She looked over the ledge and saw Walt walking down the ramp toward the Oyster Bar. What was he doing down there? Had he gotten lost? Or maybe he had seen something—or someone. It would be just like Walt to go after Mr. January all by himself again. She’d better go down and see if he needed help getting out of a jam.

  She went around the corner to the entrance to the downstairs ramp and headed down toward the Oyster Bar, where she stopped for a moment gazing longingly inside the fancy restaurant. Once when they’d been taking the train to New Haven to see Aunt Jean in a show, she’d begged her mother and father to take her inside and her father had relented. They’d sat at the counter and eaten clam chowder with little round crackers. It was still the best meal she’d ever had.

  She turned back to look for Walt. The area in front of the Oyster Bar was covered by vaulted ceilings that were paved in shiny tiles. Her father had explained that because of how the arches were shaped, sound traveled differently under them so a person whispering on one side could be heard by someone all the way on the other. The vaulted space was called the whispering gallery. She and Frankie had tested it out, sending secret messages like “The coast is clear” and “Beware the man in black” across the crowded space. It was just the kind of thing Walt would love—and there he was! Standing on the other side of the gallery, leaning against a pillar, eating a Nedick’s hot dog. No wonder he wasn’t at his post—he’d gotten hungry! Madge would give him a scare. He was in just the right place to hear a whisper from where she stood. She was debating between “Back to your post, soldier!” and “Crime does not pay . . . The Shadow knows!” when a man approached Walt. A man in a trench coat with a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his face and collar turned up.

  Mr. January.

  Walt turned pale when he saw him, but he didn’t run. He stood stock-still while Mr. January leaned toward him and whispered in his ear. A whisper that Madge, positioned in just the right place across the whispering gallery, heard perfectly well.

  “Everything is set up as we arranged,” Mr. January said. “It’s time to play your part.”

>   21

  UNDER THE BIG CLOCK

  BEFORE MADGE HAD a chance to react, Walt had tossed the rest of his hot dog into the trash and was walking up the ramp to the upper level, leaving Mr. January behind. Madge hesitated, torn between following Mr. January or Walt. Follow Walt, the voice said, he’s more important. For once she agreed.

  She took off up the ramp to catch him, wondering what Mr. January had meant by as we arranged. Walt wouldn’t enter into an arrangement with their enemy. There had to be a mistake. Maybe Mr. January had said that because he knew Madge was listening and he wanted to make her suspicious of Walt—the last person anyone would suspect of being a traitor. Walt was probably headed right now to find her and Joe and Kiku and warn them that Mr. January was in the building.

  And yes, Walt was walking across the main concourse straight toward Joe—only Madge noticed now that he was carrying a brown Gladstone bag.

  Was he planning to make the switch with the spy? But why? If Mr. January knew all about them, why still have his spy make the drop? Madge couldn’t figure it out—and neither could Joe, who was staring at Walt as he approached him, or Kiku, who was staring at Walt from the east balcony. But neither of them saw what Madge saw: a man in grimy overalls and a cap pulled low over his eyes walking from the north side of the concourse toward the clock. He was carrying a brown Gladstone bag. Jeepers! If they didn’t stop Walt, he was going to make the switch.

  Madge hurried toward Walt, but a stout lady in a fur coat, carrying half a dozen shopping bags, cut in front of her. “Watch out, lady!” Madge cried swatting aside a violet-bestrewn Bonwit bag. She dodged around a soldier and his sweetheart and a nanny pushing a pram, all the time keeping her eyes fixed on Walt as he shouldered past Joe and kept on marching toward the man in overalls. Joe looked around confusedly. He must have thought it was a change of plan. He caught Madge’s eye and shrugged.